A Burden Worth Bearing
by PartiPooper
Summary: A series of instances where Eric Cartman had to hold or carry Kyle Broflovski, and so had to face and come to terms with his true feelings. (Fluffy Kyman One-Shot; Rated T for profanities.)


The wind howled as it tried to blow me over like the torn buildings and swirl me up into a tornado of filth with the rest of San Francisco eroding around me before my very eyes. But I kept going, assured that I was tethered by the cord connected to the back of my orange diving suit, confident that Butters was keeping a good grip on it.

Butters was foolishly loyal, and right then, when I was undertaking a mission too personal to rely on Stan and Kenny for, I needed that foolish loyalty. If Stan or Kenny knew what I was doing then they would mock me forever and be eternal asshole reminders, and then Kyle would know.

I couldn't let Kyle know.

I looked over my shoulder to peer at him. My breath fogged my helmet visor, but I could still see him there, slumped limp and unconscious on my back, breathing far too lightly for my liking. If he died after all the shit I had gone through to save his pathetic day-walking Jew ass, then I was going to be pissed.

On his back was his baby brother, Ike. I had strapped him to Kyle's back, with sheets from their bedroom, because he had been there anyway, and he was small and easy to save. Plus I was sure that if Ike wasn't safe then Kyle would throw a fit and sand would make his vagina itch. Then he wouldn't be a fun toy to bat insults at – he'd just be a Debbie Downer, and a Negative Nancy, and he wouldn't be able to stem my boredom, because he would be the epitome of boredom.

I sighed wearily and turned back to face the destruction unfolding around me as I walked on, following the cord, my literal lifeline, back to Butters. It sucked so much that I needed to do this, but I just did. I had thought that, without Kyle, my life would be great. I had thought that everything would be better, and that I had plenty of people besides the Jew to rip on.

How wrong I had been.

Butters didn't fight back when I insulted him. He just took it with a smile, and agreed happily with me, and that was that. He wasn't fiery like Kyle – he didn't uselessly try to defend himself and hit me back with insults. He wasn't like Kyle. He was boring. Stan and Kenny were the same – they just walked away if I insulted or taunted or teased them. Everybody was the same. Nobody was like Kyle, and I had realised, after Kyle had moved away, that, unfortunately, I _needed_ Kyle. Like I needed air to breathe and cheesy poofs to eat, I needed Kyle, and it sucked fucking balls.

But, as much of a ball-sucker of a need it was, it was a need nonetheless, and I wasn't about to deprive myself of it. Hence why I was braving a devastating storm and facing almost certain death. I could either die being deprived of Kyle, or die trying to get him back. Everyone must have been right: I really _was_ crazy.

Amidst the howling wind and cracking pavements and crashing windows and crumbling walls, I heard a breathless groan behind me, and snapped my head back to see Kyle, his bleary eyes opening fractionally, his mouth agape trying to make a sound. I went wide-eyed with panic. _Fuck!_ He wasn't going to wake up already, was he? He wasn't going to see me saving him, was he? He wasn't going to realise how much I needed him? How important he was to me?

He emitted another groan, just as weak as the last, before closing his eyes again, succumbing to the unconscious abyss once more. I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank fuck. I did not want him to know how much he meant to me. He would never let it go, I was sure. He would persistently mock me and blackmail me and use that knowledge to his advantage like the sneaky Jew rat he was. I shuddered at the image, and then shook my head of it frantically before turning back to look ahead.

I could see, despite the haze of smug and the dust of rubble and the drizzle of rain ruining my visuals, that we were almost out of the smug storm. Fuelled by hope and the realisation that we could make it out of this alive, I sped up, walking faster and faster, and eventually, with that extra burst of effort, I made it to where I had left Butters.

"Wuh, thank goodness you're alright, Eric!" he greeted me merrily despite the circumstances, and he beamed at me though he was struggling to keep a grip on the cord as it got pulled by the wind.

"Shut up, Butters." I greeted him in my own way, and then walked to the signpost welcoming people to San Francisco. That sign was going to be pretty redundant as soon as the city disappeared completely up its own asshole. I turned my back to one of its supporting poles, and I stooped down to allow Kyle to slide off my back and fall listlessly against it. His head lolled forward onto his chest, and his hands splayed palm-up at his sides, and his legs were agape in a 'v' shape, and overall he looked pretty fucking pathetic. But he was safe and alive, and fuck me for feeling glad about that.

He was alive, and I was going to get him on a bus (no way I could carry him and Ike _all_ the way back home), and when he awoke he would be well enough to fight me, and all would be well. I smiled at the thought…and then I frowned, as I realised one flaw in that otherwise genius plan.

Though his Jew dad was a douche and his Jew mom was a bitch, Kyle adored his parents like no one's business. If they died in the smug storm where I had left them, then Kyle wouldn't be well. He would be crying and miserable all the time – I knew it, I had known him ever since we were toddlers. He would never be the same again. He would be boring, just like everyone else, and I didn't want that.

Also, if he had no parents, then Kyle would be forced to move away, to some distant relative's house, or to an orphanage, somewhere far away from me, where I would either seldom or never see him. That would make this whole rescue mission pointless. I gritted my teeth as I realised, no matter how much I hated his Jew parents, just what I had to do. Fuck Kyle for having people he deemed important. Fuck me for deeming Kyle important.

"I'm going back in." I informed Butters irately, tugging on my lifeline to make sure it was still secure.

"W-what?!" Butters stammered, just as shocked as I at what I was about to do, "Eric, are you crazy?!"

I looked up from my cord, to look Butters in his scared, stunned face, and then back down, to Kyle, lying helplessly against the pole, safe, and alive, but not well.

Not quite yet.

I sighed again, tiredly, so exhausted with the smug storm, with Kyle, with his parents, with my own damned dependency on a little Jewish boy who had a fire in him that sparked something within me.

"Maybe I am." I replied simply, and then saluted Butters for what might have been my last time. He saluted me back, and then cried out in surprise as an extra strong gust of wind came and almost tugged the cord out of his hands. My fucking life depended on that little prick.

I looked down at Kyle one last time, at his pallid skin and the red curls poking out from under his green tapper hat, and the slow, laboured rise and fall of his chest that pained me more than it should have.

Before I could think again and end up becoming rational and seeing how bad an idea the whole thing was, I turned, back towards San Francisco, and put one foot before the other, thinking of Kyle with every step to remind myself why I was doing what I was doing.

* * *

The snow scrunched underfoot as I made my way through the woods, burdened by the familiar weight of Kyle. His head was at rest on my shoulder, and his arms were wrapped around my back while his legs were wrapped around my waist, in a way that made him seem like a baby, or a koala, or a baby koala, but an injured baby koala at that.

Kyle had tripped on a protruding branch of a tree whilst we had been playing around in woodland just outside of our town. I had laughed at first, when he had fallen and gotten a face full of harshly cold snow, and I had almost buckled over altogether, clutching my stomach, when his head had risen from the soft powder to reveal that he had been gifted a pure white beard. He hadn't been laughing with me though – he had been wincing in pain, and when he had gotten up, hissing through his teeth, it had become obvious why.

His pants had been ripped and the two gaping holes had framed the state of his knees: grazed, cut, and bleeding badly. Even I had stopped laughing upon seeing them, and hissed through my teeth too, to express the sentiments _"wow, that looks nasty"_ and _"glad that wasn't me"_. Kyle though had been more eloquent than I in expressing the pure excruciating agony and abysmal loss of luck that was his situation: _"Ah,_ _fucking shit"_.

An official time-out had been declared, shouted through cupped-hands into the depths of the woods, until the other guys all emerged from their hiding places of bushes and tree trunks, cursing and complaining. They had all understood upon seeing Kyle and his knees though, and had agreed that Corporal Kyle was to be assisted from the battlefield to be issued a kiss-better and a band-aid.

Since I had been the one to see him fall and to call time-out, for some reason it was unanimously agreed that I would be the one assisting him in receiving medical care, and though I had protested loudly, desperate to remain on the battlefield and be kickass, I had been outvoted. And so, here I was, carrying Kyle out of the woods and back to civilisation.

I hadn't been carrying him at first. Initially I had stormed ahead of him, angrily cursing as I heard the guys ending the time-out behind me and going back into play, and hoping that Kyle was keeping up behind me. But as the shouts of feigned war and the sounds of imitated gunfire disappeared as we got further away, staggering footfalls and grunts of pain became more prevalent in my ears. With an exasperated mix between a sign and a groan, I turned to see Kyle, limping slowly with much pain evident in the contortion of his face, trying to gain support from the tree trunks we passed. It was pathetic, and annoying, and I wanted him to stop.

"Hurry up, Jew." I said irately, and he glared up at my impatience through eyes that were beginning to water.

"Fuck you, fat ass." he managed through gritted teeth, and I huffed at his insolence. Who did he think he was? I could have been back in the woods with the guys playing war, taking down enemies and doing my duty for Germany (yes, I was playing a German soldier – they're much cooler than American soldiers and it gave me an opportunity to use all the German swear words I had learnt), but instead I was helping his sorry ass through the woods and defending him from rabid rabbits, and surly squirrels, and perverts and paedophiles. Man, he was an asshole.

"Come on, you're taking forever." I whined, heading back to him so that he could better see the despair and disappointment in my face. I stood before him, my hands placed on my hips, and stared him down. It wasn't hard to do – he was one of the smaller boys, after all – and yet sometimes the prideful, defensive way he held himself made him seem bigger than he actually was. Not this time though – this time he just looked feeble and weak and small, and it pissed me off.

"Sorry," he said, seething, with fury in his stare, "but if you haven't noticed, my knees are fucked up right now, so _forgive_ me if it's hard to walk!" He glared up at me, his green eyes alight with anger, like emeralds burning in a fireplace, and I smirked at the sight. _That_ was the Kyle I liked to see: the one who proudly defended himself, and gave me something to throw insults at, and tease, and taunt, and altogether made our exchanges full of excitement and lacking in boredom.

"Thank you for apologising, Kyle, you're forgiven." I said, raising a hand to my chest as though I was touched. He scoffed and rolled his eyes at me, and I was amused by his disdain. Kyle was always ever so amusing. Thank fuck I had saved him from San Francisco all that time ago. I still remembered San Francisco well, when I had saved him from the smug storm by carrying him out of it. And then it hit me: the fastest, most efficient way to assist Kyle to his mom and her medical kit, so that I could hurry back to playing the game with the guys.

Quicker than Kyle could realise what I was doing and throw a fit about it, I took a step towards him that closed the gap between us, ducked down, gripped him by the waist, and hoisted him up into the air. "Whoa!" he cried out in shock and surprise, his hands digging into my shoulders in a panic, his legs dangling aloft, his face creasing in worry, "Put me down, Cartman, what are you doing?!"

"What does it look like?" I scoffed at his stupidity, and then steadied him in place, securing a hand at his back and another hand at the curve of his ass. I pulled Kyle's struggling body closer against me then, so his head was at my shoulder, and his yelling was louder against my ear, and turned to continue the walk to his house.

I felt thankful for Kyle's smallness then, because that made him light too. He was easy to carry, even when he was wriggling around and beating his fists against my back, and the whole venture was going a lot faster than when he had been lagging behind. And at least this way he wasn't in pain or hurting himself. I didn't know why I was glad about that, but I was.

Eventually Kyle realised that resistance was futile, and he settled in my hold, and wrapped his arms and legs around me to prevent slipping. He turned quiet too, so that all we could hear was the scrunch of the snow, and our breath, coming out in puffs like we were smoking dragons. It was weird, somewhat. I could feel all of Kyle: his red curls poking out from underneath his hat and tickling my cheek and chin, his breath warming my ear and neck, his heart thrumming underneath his orange jacket. Indeed, it was very weird, but I also couldn't help finding it a little bit…nice.

He smelt nice too. He smelt of sweat from play, and pine and oak and dirt, and lavender shampoo and mint toothpaste, and just generally of home and all things wonderfully familiar. The more I inhaled it as we trekked through the woods, the more I came to like it. Never before had I realised how great Kyle smelt. I stifled a groan as I then realised how fucked up that was. Next thing I knew I would actually be liking the colour of his hair. Fuck me.

I heard him say something then, but it was so quiet that I couldn't make it out. I was curious about what it was he had said though, so I asked him to repeat, "What was that, Jew?" He didn't reply immediately. He stayed silent, and it felt like he wasn't going to say anything at all, or maybe I had imagined it and he hadn't even said anything in the first place. Before I could just shrug it off though, he said it again, louder so that I could hear.

"Thank you, Cartman."

My eyes went wide and I shifted my head slightly, to try to look at him and see if he was being genuine. His face was obscured by his curls and buried in my shoulder though, so I just had to assume that he meant it honestly by the tone of his voice. It had sounded like it had hurt to say that grateful phrase to me, like it was unfamiliar on his tongue, and, indeed, I had never heard him say it to me before. It stumped me, hearing it, and my heart stuttered slightly in my chest, faltering at the unfamiliarity. But also the niceness.

Hearing him say that made me feel a little bit, at least somewhat, happy. It was strange that he had said something that made me happy. But then I realised that Kyle always made me happy, in his own way that I couldn't understand, so it wasn't that much of a surprise feeling my lips upturn into a crescent. Subconsciously, the hand on his back tightened, and I tucked my chin deeper into his shoulder.

"Whatever, you fucking Jew." I said, but in spite of the slight I didn't manage to reign in the fondness I said it with.

* * *

The band was rocking explosively on stage, the crowd was cheering deafeningly around me, feet were thudding with the beat of the music, and all of it was quietened to me as Kyle's thighs were pressed against each of my ears. Again, I was carrying him. I couldn't help it though: even though we had become teenagers he had remained the smallest in our little friendship group, and so he had been jumping and hopping around amidst the crowd, frowning as he tried and failed to look over heads and shoulders much higher than his own.

As amusing (and cute, damn it all) as it had been, it had also been too pathetic and saddening to watch, especially knowing that he had spent almost all his money on the concert and he wasn't even getting a good view of it. So, with a sigh, I had crept up behind him, ducked down, and shoved my head in-between his legs, and I had delighted in his cries of surprise and fear as his feet had left the ground and he had risen up high into the air, above the heads and shoulders previously blocking his view.

He had looked down in shock, and when he had seen my brunet head of hair he had scowled, probably thinking I was up to something. I had just grinned toothily, and hopefully disarmingly charmingly, up at him in return, and his scowl had faded away, to be overtaken with another expression: something more thoughtful, and disbelieving, and grateful, and altogether wide-eyed and too adorable to look at for too long, so I had turned my attention back to the band onstage and hoped that he would too.

I had seen Stan and Kenny elbowing each other and whispering to one another out of the corner of my eye, but I had just pretended not to notice them, though my face had heated up, and eventually they had gotten bored of it and looked back to the band too.

So there I was again, back to the familiar, all-too-light weight of Kyle, and his all-too-nice warmth under my hands secured on his thighs. His hands felt hot where they held onto my stubbly jaw, and I tried not to think too much about the way his crotch was pressed against the back of my neck. Alas, I was in the midst of puberty, so all I ever thought about was crotches, and predominately Kyle's.

I was gay, I had come to realise. Or rather, not so much _gay_, because I never got the hots for any other guys, but I definitely thought about Kyle more than was deemed healthy, and Kyle was a guy. I was Kyle-sexual, if anything. I constantly wanted to be with him, to see what faces he would make and to hear what he would say, to watch him yelling and to witness him laughing, because in the past few years I had come to realise that Kyle's laughter was just as amazing as his anger, and so had made it my personal mission to tell him as many corny jokes as I could and squeeze as many cheesy puns as possible into our conversations.

Damn it all, I even _had_ started liking the colour of his hair somewhere along the way. It was red like fire, like the hue of his fury and his embarrassment, and the way it curled into a messy mop and framed his wide, intelligent emerald eyes was all too endearing. I knew, when I had stopped curling my lip back at his hair and instead grinned goofily at it, that I had already fallen pretty deep. I had tried to stop myself – avoiding him, ignoring him, taking up hobbies to distract myself from him – but I hadn't realised that it was already too late. I was a goner.

The band started up another song – the guitars riffed out a fast, finger-blistering tune and the drums kicked and smashed into an unstoppable beat, and the keyboardist fingered (heh-heh) a ghostly, haunting melody that brought in the lead singer, breathing dark lyrics into the mic. The crowd went wild as they recognised the song, and I grinned as I felt the vibrations of Kyle's excited yell, building from the bottom of his gut. He fucking loved this song. He fucking loved this band. I fucking loved him.

Kyle grew brave and let go of my jaw, to raise his hands into fists above his head, and he seemed determined to scream louder than anyone else. It was a stupid goal, considering there were thousands of people all creating an energetic chorus of excitement, but I admired him for trying nonetheless. Plus it was funny, how futile his efforts were, and I laughed underneath him.

Kyle threw his fists to and fro, as though he was the drummer, as though he was the composer, as though he was beating the music into the very air, and it was great. As the beat got quicker and the riff got sicker, I began jumping to the music, joining the chorus of thudding feet, and my heart stammered as I heard Kyle whoop and giggle above me, and he brought one of his hands back to my jaw to steady himself. We were drunk on euphoria, and I loved it. I loved how much he loved it, and I loved him, and I never wanted the night to end, I never wanted for him to have to get down from my shoulders and leave me.

It was a stupid want, because of course it would end. The music would die, and the band would thank us for coming out and supporting them, and we would all cheer out of adoration and love and demand an encore. The four of us would file out with the rest of the crowd, the band shirts we had bought that night drenched in sweat, and we would get into my second-hand truck and I would drive us all home, and I would lie in bed trying to remember how Kyle had felt, how he had smelt, how he had sounded, and end up dreaming about him as always.

Until then though, I had him. He was on my shoulders, and I could feel the heat of his jean-clad thighs on my shoulders and his heels pressing into my stomach and the soft warmth of his fingers, and I could hear his funny futile yelling and his drowned-out singing and his intoxicating laughter, and I could smell his sweat and the soda he had spilled on his jeans earlier, and until the music ended it would all be mine.

* * *

We were sat on the couch in Kyle's living room, eagerly awaiting the email that would decide his future. He was expecting an email from Harvard that afternoon, telling him whether or not he had gotten in. I was pretty sure he had, since he had always been a massive nerd and had maintained his straight A's since elementary school, but Kyle always worried unnecessarily and was a jittering mess as he kept refreshing the laptop propped on the coffee table.

His dad was at work at the time, but his mom was in the kitchen and had been looking into space and washing the same dish for half an hour already. Looking at her, I understood where Kyle's anxiety originated from. I tried to cheer him up though. I clapped him hard but playfully on the back and kept telling him he was fucking fine and if he didn't get in then I would eat my limbs. He just told me to get ready to eat my limbs, and I sighed as I realised that nothing would make him feel better except for official acceptance from the university.

I wasn't going to university with him, sadly. Kyle had helped me get through and graduate high school, but academia had never been my thing. However, language _had_, and so I was going to be living in Germany for a couple of years to become more fluent in the lingo than I already was and to work at a company as a trainee interpreter. I would be sad to leave Kyle for that long, and even he seemed a little upset about our new long-distance relationship, but we had Skype and emails and telephones, and we would be visiting each other when we could.

That was my future decided, but we were still waiting on Kyle's. He never took his eyes off the laptop monitor, as though if he stared at it long and hard enough then it would make the email come faster. I just looked at him – I still hadn't gotten tired of the expressions Kyle made, and this one was rare: brow creased in worry, his frown a determined line, his eyes begging. His hands were balled into fists against his chest, either waiting to be thrown in the air to cheer, or to thrust outwards and punch the laptop out of frustration, depending on how it all went down. I almost wished for the latter, just because it'd be funny.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, an email addressed from Harvard came through. We on the couch breathed a collective sigh of relief, and then Kyle looked to the kitchen doorway and called out, "Mom, the email is here!"

His mom moved faster than I had ever seen her move before, racing into the room like the email would disappear if she was too late. "What does it say, bubbala?!" she cried out, nervous and desperate and excited. She was almost as excited about Harvard as Kyle, and she wasn't even the one going. She had always been big on Kyle's grades though and had nagged him non-stop about his homework and coursework and exams and extra credits, even though she needn't have done so since Kyle had been on top of all that already.

"I don't know." Kyle shook his head and swallowed a lump of fear, "We're about to found out."

He double-clicked the email title, and the page loaded quickly (luckily, or else Kyle would have thrown a fit at the prospect of more waiting). I sat back and watched Kyle as his eyes darted across the screen, savouring every word, and then I jumped as, merely seconds later, he jerked up from the couch with a scream that could outmatch a banshee.

"I can't believe it!" he shrieked, his hands fisting his curls, staring in disbelief at the email, although I didn't know _why_ he couldn't believe it when he was and always had been a geeky dorky swotty nerd. And then his eyes bloomed with tears, and I didn't know whether to be surprised or not – Kyle was very emotionally driven and wore his heart on his sleeve, but forever insisted that he was tough. Right then though he was shaking, and as his tears fell he breathed a short burst of laughter that sounded relieved. "I'm going to Harvard." he whispered, more to himself than anyone else.

"Oh, Kyle!" his mom crowed in delight, and then all but suffocated him as she pulled him into a bone-breaking, spine-snapping hug. She was a lady, but she sure had a strong arm. Kyle half-accepted the hug as he cried into her chest and half-struggled as she forcibly planted an armada of kisses on the crown of his head. "My baby's going to Harvard!"

"Congratulations, Kyle." I said with a smile after his mom had hesitantly released him from her clutches, and when he turned to me, teary-eyed and quaking with euphoria and excitement, I held my arms out to him. He smiled weakly back at me, with a quivering chin, and tried to rub evidence of his weakness from his eyes as he approached me. He was soon crying out in surprise though as I thrust forward to wrap my arms around his torso, and then he was giggling, in the way I loved and would surely miss as soon as I went to Germany, as I spun him round and round.

At a safe distance from the swing of Kyle's legs, beside the couch, his mom laughed too, and clapped jovially as she watched me spin her son in circles over and over, until I started to get dizzy. Kyle continued to giggle even after I stopped though, just standing in the middle of the room, holding him aloft, and I laughed too, as happy for him as he was for himself.

After our laughing fit we just stared into each other's eyes, glimmering with relief and happiness, our cheeks red from laughter, and all I could feel was Kyle's hands on my shoulders, and his chest flush against mine, and his quick-coming breath tickling my face. Drunk on happiness, we both pushed forward instantaneously, to press our lips together in a kiss full of mirth for both our individual successes.

I would go to Germany, and Kyle would go to Harvard. I would send him postcards filled with different ways to tell him how much he meant to me in German, and he would show me his dorm room on a lagging, pixelated Skype connection. I would make him visit me at Christmas so as to tour him around one of the world-famous and widely-beloved German Christmas markets, and he would phone me on his birthday and tell me all about his day. And two years later I would return to work as a German interpreter in an American company, and he would help me move into a Cambridge apartment with him.

After we parted from the kiss, and Kyle was smiling ecstatically at me, looking as though he felt to be the luckiest person in the world, his mom was at our side, phone in hand, beaming at us both in a way I still wasn't used to. She hadn't taken kindly to me at first, and had kept asking Kyle when we were going to break up in the first few months of our relationship. But I had proven how irrevocably infatuated I was with her son, so I had grown on her, eventually. "It's your dad, Kyle." she said, thrusting the phone at him, "He wants to congratulate you."

Kyle reached out and took the phone and, still in my arms, he answered it. I watched as his grin got wider and wider as his dad sounded prouder and prouder as they spoke, and it was beautiful. Kyle was beautiful. Fuck me, I couldn't put him down. He still pissed me off and did things I didn't like and had flaws and imperfections that drove me crazy, but he was beautiful enough, in so many ways, for me to forgive all that. And he forgave me when I, admittedly, shouldn't be forgiven, and there was no way I was going to let that go. Never.

* * *

Never before had a door been so foreboding. I heaved a heavy sigh as I ran a hand through my hair, vexed. I had been doing that for hours already, so my hair was probably a state. It didn't matter though. All that mattered was behind this door, in our shared house brimming with tension. I could practically see it seeping out of the cracks of the door, trying to clutch me. I had to allow it to. I had to walk in there and face the music, or else who knew what would become of us.

Kyle and I were both admittedly very easily-affronted and temperamental people. Due to this, we'd had more fights than we had fingers to count them with, and this was just another one of them. Sometimes the fights were so minor that we could wake up the next morning and forget that we had ever fought at all, but sometimes they were more intense, and required one of us to step forward, admit to our mistakes, and apologise.

Kyle and I were both, unfortunately, very prideful too. Neither of us was very fond of admitting that we were ever wrong in anything. I seldom saw anything I did as wrong, so I hated having to say something I had done was as such – probably more so than Kyle. But I hated it more when Kyle gave me the cold shoulder and didn't talk to me, and wouldn't banter with me, or laugh or smile in front of me. And so, I had to do the thing I hated to get back the thing I loved.

I dropped my hand from my hair, breathed a steadying breath as I stared down the door, and then reached out to grasp the cold knob of it. I turned it, and it clicked loudly in the resounding silence. A silent Kyle was the worst Kyle. When he was silent he wasn't even a fun angry – he was angry beyond angry, as impossible as that sounded. He would guilt me with his sealed lips and his narrowed eyes, and it would hurt worse than admitting defeat.

It felt weird, walking so hesitantly into the house after I had stormed out of it so recklessly only a couple of hours prior. Shards of glass were still lying about the hallway floor, from where Kyle had thrown something at me as I had left and had instead hit the wall. There was no light on anywhere, and the silence was deafening. I actually began to wonder whether Kyle had left too, to go and rant about me to Stan, or get drunk with Kenny, or seek sanctuary at his parents' house. But when I rounded the doorway into the living room, there he was.

He was sat on the floor, his back against the couch, hunched into a sad ball. His bare, pale legs shone in the moonlight cascading through the window, and he wore only a pair of sleeping shorts and my red hoodie. He hadn't been wearing that when I had left. My footsteps were loud in the quiet, and they spurred him to lift his head to look at me. He was a mess. His hair was rumpled, as though he had been pulling and tearing at it, and his eyes were red and wet. He looked the epitome of misery.

He said not a word and moved not an inch as I slowly made my way into the room, approaching cautiously. He just watched me edge closer with suspicion, spite and scorn, and I tried to quell the growing fear that he wasn't going to forgive me anymore. I didn't deserve his forgiveness – sometimes I even felt like I didn't deserve him – but I was selfish and I wanted it badly. And so, with his attention fixed on me, negative or not, I sent him a pleading gaze and tried to fix it before it was too late.

"I'm sorry." I said, quietly, sadly, and he raised his head at that, his eyes widening and his mouth gaping. He knew how strange and rare it was for me to apologise first. I sighed, at how much he fucked me up and made me act in ways I would never act with anyone else, and continued, "I fucked up. I know I did. I fucked up, Kyle, and I'm sorry." I waited then, but not for him to apologise. He had nothing to apologise for, I knew, except for throwing glass at me. I waited for him to either reject or accept me, and prayed to every deity ever that it would be the latter.

I was lawless, and a sinner, but every deity ever must have taken pity on me, because even though my apology had been pathetic, and even though I had remained too stubborn and prideful to expand on exactly how I had fucked up and exactly what made Kyle the righteous one out of it all, still Kyle's anger seemed to dissolve, and I watched with hope as he stood up slowly. At first he just stood where he had risen, observing me, studying me for the honesty in what I had said. I hoped I looked as genuinely sorry as I felt.

I must have, because then Kyle pelted across the room and closed the distance between us, and he was pounding his fists into my chest, but weakly so, and he was sobbing in a way that I recognised as relieved. I absently wondered how he was so happy with a fuck up like me. "You're an asshole!" he wailed as weakly as his punches, and I nuzzled the crown of his head and inhaled him gratefully, glad to have someone know I was an asshole and still want me.

I bent down, and I wrapped my arms around the bend of his knees, and I lifted him skyward, so that he was seated on the crescent of my arms, looking at me from above. His cheeks were damp. He let out another sob, and then, his legs digging into my sides, almost as a penance, he grabbed my cheeks in his hands, and he lunged forward and placed what felt like a hundred kisses to my mouth in quick succession. I allowed him to, and felt blessed for it.

"I hate you so much," he sobbed as he placed a kiss to the corner of my mouth, and then another to the bow of my lip, "but I fucking love you." He kept kissing me, and they felt like raindrops, in the storm of my infatuation. I was crazy about him, and if he truly loved me as he said he did, even just a little bit, then I was already the happiest person alive. He killed me, and he drove me insane, but he resuscitated me, and he was my clarity. He brought me joy like no one else, and in doing so he ruined me. Thank fuck he was forgiving, otherwise, if he left me, as he almost had so many times before, as he almost had in the San Francisco smug storm all those years ago, then I surely wouldn't manage. I needed him then, and I still needed him now.

"That's fucking stupid." I managed to say amidst the assault on my lips, and he growled at me, angrily, hungrily, and his fingers dug firmer into my cheeks. In spite of the cold of him, his touch left me hot as it always did, as it always had, and I clutched him tighter. He was still small and light – still the Kyle I was familiar with the weight of, and had fallen for.

"You're fucking stupid." he retaliated, and I laughed against his persistent kisses. I was indeed stupid – my report card all throughout my school life had gladly stated that fact over and over – and yet I knew that when he said it he hadn't mean it as a slight, but as praise, because my stupidity made me force him to dance with me whenever _I Swear_ came on the radio or television, and compelled me to buy him the cheesiest gifts he hated on Valentine's day, and do ridiculous and often embarrassing things to make him laugh, and he loved that.

"I'm only stupid because you make me that way." It was true. Any and all sense I possess immediately goes out of the window whenever Kyle is involved. He turns me to pathetic mush, and I hate how much power he has over me, but I can't help it. I wished I didn't need him, but I did, and I was just going to have to deal with it.

"Is that your fucked up way of saying you love me too?" Kyle scoffed a shuddery laugh, and hearing that short burst of promise, of the laughter and mirth I could be hearing from him, fireworks exploded within me, and my heart swelled with hope. It could be fixed – I _was_ fixing it – and thank fuck for that because any triumph I felt from winning a fight was worthless if I lost Kyle from it. After all, who else would I brag about my win to?

"You know me well." I chuckled, genuinely happy, and kissed him back finally. We must have looked a strange picture: two men in a darkened room, one being held to the heavens by the other, the moon casting a silvery silhouette of their figures, sobbing and laughing in the quiet. But if holding Kyle at night in a dark, quiet room was strange, then I didn't want to be normal.

* * *

Just before Kyle could step up to the porch of our house, I pulled him back by the shoulder. He turned to cock his head at me and regard me with confusion, and I grinned at him, and at the brilliantly hilarious idea in my mind. "Shall I carry you over the threshold?" I held my arms out, ready to place them at his shoulder and the bend of his knees in the bridal style of carrying. He took an abrupt step back though, holding his hand out in a halting motion.

"Oh, no!" he said, laughing as though what I had said was preposterous, "There's no need for that. We just signed a bunch of papers, you know." He swatted me irately across the face with said papers, to prove his point, but that didn't bother me. My grin didn't fade, and I took a step towards him, my hands still at the ready.

Wide-eyed and fearing being literally swept off his feet, Kyle made a mad dash for the door, but I grabbed him around the middle before he could escape, and hoisted him up, sliding my arm under his kicking legs and sliding my other arm up to rest at the back of his wriggling shoulders. "Cartman," he yelled, sounding exasperated but amused, "put me down, or else, I swear-!"

"By the moon and the stars in the skies, Kyle?" I offered with a kiss to his cheek, and laughed when he batted my face away with a cry of indignation. Again, I didn't care. Nothing could sour my mood that day. I was finally, officially, legally bound to the person I loved. We hadn't dressed up fancy, because we weren't like that. I had worn baggy pants and scuffed trainers and a t-shirt adorned with the lyrics to _I Swear _(much to Kyle's chagrin), and Kyle had worn a green polo shirt and roll-up jeans, and Stan and Kenny had been our witnesses, and we had gone to Denny's with them afterwards to celebrate. Others may have hated it, but I thought it was perfect, so long as it was Kyle's name beside mine on the papers, tying us together.

"Oh, not that fucking song again!" he groaned, massaging his brow with his fingertips, and I laughed, because it was funny, and he was wonderful, and he was mine.

Without further ado, I stepped up to the porch, kicked the door open (ignoring Kyle's complaints about messing up the paint and breaking the hinges) and stepped over the threshold with him in my arms, where he had always been, and where he would always stay.

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

**Hello, and welcome to the first South Park, Kyman fanfiction I have ever uploaded. I started watching the show recently, after years of disregarding it as stupid and absurd. But now, after all these years, now that I am older and more mature...it's still stupid and absurd to me. But I love it, and one of the things I love about it is the love-hate relationship between two of the main boys, Eric Cartman and Kyle Broflovski. I decided it was high time to contribute to the part of the fandom that holds dear this OTP, and so this story was born.  
I admittedly have a thing for Cartman carrying Kyle, so you can see where the inspiration for this story came from. I also have a thing for Kyle wearing Cartman's clothes and drowning in the size of them. Such thoughts make my little shipper heart sing. But anyway, I tried to include as many different holds and carries as I could, such as the piggy-back, baby/koala, shoulder-sitting, swinging, Argentina, bridal, etc. I hope you had as much fun imagining these two performing them as I did.  
I haven't been with South Park for very long at all, so I probably don't have a very good grasp on the characters. And so, forgive me if they seem out of character or their actions and words feel unbelievable, but remember this: one only comes to understand a character from practising writing them. Give me time, my friends.  
I hope to make friends here, and discuss the show and its characters with you, so please don't hesitate to talk to me. I am friendly...or, well, I try to be. I'm not sure whether I'll come off that way, but heck, if I seem rude or mean then I apologise in advance.**

**Disclaimer: South Park belongs not to me, but to its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.**


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